The Bell P-59 Airacomet was a single-seat, twin jet-engine fighter aircraft that was designed and built by

Bell Aircraft The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of man ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the first produced in the United States. As the British were further along in jet engine development, they donated an engine for the United States to copy in 1941 that became the basis for the

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

jet used by the P-59 a year later. Because the plane was underpowered, the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

(USAAF) was not impressed by its performance and canceled half of the original order for 100 fighters, using the completed aircraft as trainers. The USAAF would instead go on to select the

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. Designed and built by Lockheed in 1943 and delivered just 143 days from the start of design, prod ...

as its first operational jet fighter. Although no P-59s entered combat, the aircraft paved the way for later generations of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft.

Design and development

Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the UK's jet program when he attended a

taxiing Taxiing (rarely spelled taxying) is the movement of an aircraft on the ground, under its own power, in contrast to towing or pushback where the aircraft is moved by a tug. The aircraft usually moves on wheels, but the term also includes aircr ...

demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. The subject had been mentioned, but not in-depth, as part of the

Tizard Mission The Tizard Mission, officially the British Technical and Scientific Mission, was a British delegation that visited the United States during WWII to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development ( ...

the previous year. He requested and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S. on 1 October in a Consolidated B-24 Liberator, along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of

Power Jets Power Jets was a British company set up by Frank Whittle for the purpose of designing and manufacturing jet engines. The company was nationalised in 1944, and evolved into the National Gas Turbine Establishment. History Founded on 27 Januar ...

engineers. On 4 September, he offered the U.S. company

a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the

General Electric I-A The General Electric I-A was the first working jet engine in the United States, manufactured by General Electric (GE) and achieving its first run on April 18, 1942. The engine was the result of receiving an imported Power Jets W.1X that was flo ...

. On the following day, he approached

Lawrence Dale Bell Lawrence Dale "Larry" Bell (April 5, 1894 – October 20, 1956) was an American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation. Biography Bell was born in Mentone, Indiana, and lived there until 1907, when his family moved to Santa Monic ...

, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. Bell agreed and set to work on producing three prototypes. As a

disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...

tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation P-59A, to suggest it was a development of the unrelated

Bell XP-59 The Bell XP-52 and subsequent XP-59 were World War II fighter aircraft design projects by the American Bell Aircraft Corporation. Both projects featured a twin-boom layout with a rear-mounted engine driving pusher contra-rotating propellers. ...

fighter project which had been canceled. The design was finalized on 9 January 1942, and construction began. In March, long before the prototypes were completed, an order for 13 YP-59A pre-production aircraft was added to the contract. The P-59A had an oval cross-section, all-metal

stressed skin In mechanical engineering, stressed skin is a type of rigid construction, intermediate between monocoque and a rigid frame with a non-loaded covering. A stressed skin structure has its compression-taking elements localized and its tension-taking ...

semi-

monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...

fuselage that housed a single pressurized cockpit. The mid-mounted, straight wing had two spars plus a false spar in the inner panel. The electrically-powered

tricycle landing gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...

was attached to the center spar. The pair of

General Electric J31 The General Electric J31 was the first jet engine to be mass-produced in the United States. Design and development After a visit to England mid-1941, General Henry H. Arnold was so impressed by flight demonstrations of the Gloster E.28/39 je ...

turbojets were positioned under the

wing root The wing root is the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft or winged-spaceship that is closest to the fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, o ...

s in streamlined

nacelle A nacelle ( ) is a "streamlined body, sized according to what it contains", such as an engine, fuel, or equipment on an aircraft. When attached by a pylon entirely outside the airframe, it is sometimes called a pod, in which case it is attached ...

s. The armament was located in the nose of the aircraft; two of the three XP-59As and most of the YP-59As had a pair of M10 autocannon. Later aircraft, including the production models, had one M10 autocannon and three AN/M2 Browning heavy machine guns. The aircraft carried a total of of fuel in four self-sealing tanks in the inner wing panels. Both production models could carry

drop tank In aviation, a drop tank (external tank, wing tank or belly tank) is used to describe auxiliary fuel tanks externally carried by aircraft. A drop tank is expendable and often capable of being jettisoned. External tanks are commonplace on modern ...

s under the wings. In addition, the P-59B was provided with a fuel tank in each outer wing panel. The crated prototype had been built on the second floor of a disused

Pierce-Arrow The Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company was an American motor vehicle manufacturer based in Buffalo, New York, which was active from 1901 to 1938. Although best known for its expensive luxury cars, Pierce-Arrow also manufactured commercial trucks ...

factory, but its components were too big to fit through any

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They a ...

and required a hole to be broken in the brick outer wall to remove the first XP-59A. It was shipped to Muroc Army Air Field (today, Edwards Air Force Base) in California on 12 September 1942 by train for

flight testing Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...

. The aircraft first became airborne during high-speed

tests on 1 October with Bell test pilot Robert Stanley at the controls, although the first official flight was made by

Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge o ...

Laurence Craigie the next day. While being handled on the ground, the aircraft was fitted with a dummy propeller to disguise its true nature. When heavy rains flooded

Rogers Dry Lake Rogers Dry Lake is an endorheic desert salt pan in the Mojave Desert of Kern County, California. The lake derives its name from the Anglicization from the Spanish name, Rodriguez Dry Lake. It is the central part of Edwards Air Force Base as its ...

at Muroc in March 1943, the second prototype was towed to Hawes Field, an auxiliary airfield of Victorville Army Airfield, later

George Air Force Base George Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located within the city limits, 8 miles northwest, of central Victorville, California, about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California. Established by the United States Army Air C ...

, over a public road. After one flight on 11 March, security concerns caused the jet to be transferred to nearby Harper Lake where it remained until 7 April.''Air International'' March 1980, pp. 132–134. Five of the Airacomets, a pair of XP-59As, two YP-59As, and a P-59B had open-air flight observer cockpits (similar to those of biplanes) fitted in the nose with a small windscreen, replacing the armament bay. The XP-59As were used for flight demonstrations and testing, but one of the latter pair was used as a "mother ship" for the other modified YP-59A during remote control trials in late 1944 and early 1945. After the drone (aircraft), drone crashed during take-off on 23 March, a P-59B was modified to serve as its replacement.''Air International'' March 1980, pp. 136–137. During diving trials in 1944, one YP-59A was forced to make a belly landing and another crashed when its entire empennage broke away. Over the following months, tests on the prototypes and pre-production P-59s revealed a multitude of problems including poor engine response and reliability (common shortcomings of all early turbojets), poor flight dynamics, lateral and directional stability at speeds over , so that it tended to "snake" and was a poor gunnery platform. The performance was greatly hampered by the insufficient thrust from its engines that was far below expectations. The Army Air Force conducted combat trials against propeller-driven Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Lockheed P-38J Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Republic P-47D Thunderbolt fighters in February 1944 and found that the older aircraft outperformed the jet. It, therefore, decided that the P-59 was best suited as a training aircraft to familiarize pilots with jet-engine aircraft. Even as deliveries of the YP-59As began in July 1943, the USAAF had placed a preliminary order for 100 production machines as the P-59A Airacomet, the name having been chosen by Bell employees. This was confirmed on 11 March 1944 but was later cut to 50 aircraft on 10 October after the procurement bureaucracy had digested the earlier evaluation.

Operational service

The 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the

, but the performance improvement was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A (United States military aircraft serials, S/n: ''42-108773'') was supplied to the Royal Air Force (receiving United Kingdom military aircraft serials, British serial ''RJ362/G''), in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor, Gloster Meteor I, ''EE210/G''. British pilots found that the aircraft compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. Two YP-59A Airacomets (''42-108778'' and ''42-100779'') were also delivered to the U.S. Navy where they were evaluated as the "YF2L-1" but were quickly found completely unsuitable for Aircraft carrier, carrier operations. Three P-59Bs were transferred to the Navy in 1945–1946, although they kept their designations. The Navy used all five of its jets as trainers and for flight testing. Faced with their own ongoing difficulties, Bell eventually completed 50 production Airacomets, 20 P-59As and 30 P-59Bs; deliveries of P-59As took place in the fall of 1944. The P-59Bs were assigned to the 412th Fighter Group to familiarize AAF pilots with the handling and performance characteristics of jet aircraft. While the P-59 was not a great success, the type did give the USAAF and the USN experience with the operation of jet aircraft, in preparation for the more advanced types that would shortly become available.''Air International'' March 1980, p. 138.

Variants

; XP-59 :Unrelated piston engine-powered pusher-propeller design developed from the Bell XP-52. Not built. ; XP-59A : Prototype of the new jet engine-powered aircraft, three built, serial numbers 42-108784/108786. ; YP-59A : Series of test aircraft, 13 built, serial numbers 42-108771/108783. ; YF2L-1 : Two YP-59A (42-108778/108779) delivered to the US Navy for carrier evaluation as Bu63960/63961. ;P-59A : First production version, 20 built, serial numbers 44-22609/22628. Redesignated ZF-59A in June 1948. ; XP-59B :Study for a single-engined P-59A. ;P-59B : Improved P-59A. 80 aircraft ordered but only 30 built, serial numbers 44-22629/22658, further 50 (44-22659/22708) canceled. Redesignated ZF-59B in June 1948.

Operators

* **Royal Air Force received one aircraft, becoming ''RJ362/G'', in exchange for a Gloster Meteor, Gloster Meteor I ''EE210/G''. * **

***412th Fighter Group ****29th Training Systems Squadron, 29th Fighter Squadron ****31st Tactical Training Squadron, 31st Fighter Squadron ****445th Fighter Squadron **United States Navy

Surviving aircraft

Six P-59s are known to survive today. On display: ; XP-59A :42-108784 – National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. ; P-59A :44-22614 – March Field Air Museum, March Air Reserve Base (former March AFB) in Riverside, California. ;P-59B :44-22633 – Edwards AFB. :44-22656 – Pioneer Village (Nebraska) in Minden, Nebraska. :44-22650 – National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. A Bell P-59A Airacomet at March Field Air Museum in 2013

A Bell P-59A Airacomet at March Field Air Museum in 2013

Under restoration: ; YP-59A :42-108777 – As of 2020, being restored to flying condition with General Electric J31 engines by the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California.

Specifications (P-59B)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* "Airacomet... A Jet Pioneer by Bell". ''Air International'', Vol. 18 No. 3, March 1980, pp. 132–139. Bromley, UK: Fine Scroll. . * Angelucci, Enzo and Peter M. Bowers, Peter Bowers. ''The American Fighter''. Yeovil, UK: Haynes, 1987. . * * Pace, Steve. ''Bell P-59 Airacomet''. Air Force Legends Number 208. Ginter Books, Simi Valley, California, 2000. . * Pelletier, Alan J. ''Bell Aircraft Since 1935''. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1992. .